The
University of California, Berkeley (also referred to as Berkeley, UC
Berkeley, California or simply Cal) is a public research university
located in Berkeley, California. It is the flagship campus of the
University of California system, one of three parts in the state's
public higher education plan, which also includes the California State
University system and the California Community Colleges System. It
is considered by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings
as one of six university brands that lead in world reputation rankings
in 2015 and is ranked third on the U.S. News' 2015 Best Global
Universities rankings conducted in the U.S. and nearly 50 other
countries.The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) also ranks the University of California, Berkeley fourth in the world overall, and first among public universities. It is broadly ranked first in science, third in engineering, and fifth in social sciences, with specific rankings of first in chemistry, first in physics, third in computer science, fourth in mathematics, and fourth in economics/business. The university is also well known for producing a high number of entrepreneurs.
Established
in 1868 as the result of the merger of the private College of
California and the public Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts
College in Oakland, UC Berkeley is the oldest institution in the UC
system and offers approximately 350 undergraduate and graduate degree
programs in a wide range of disciplines. The University of California
has been charged with providing both "classical" and "practical"
education for the state's people. Cal co-manages three United States
Department of Energy National Laboratories, including the Los Alamos
National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy.
Berkeley
faculty, alumni, and researchers have won 72 Nobel Prizes (including 30
alumni Nobel laureates), nine Wolf Prizes, seven Fields Medals
(including 3 alumni medalists), 18 Turing Awards, 45 MacArthur
Fellowships, 20 Academy Awards, and 11 Pulitzer Prizes. To date, UC
Berkeley scientists have discovered six chemical elements of the
periodic table (californium, seaborgium, berkelium, einsteinium,
fermium, lawrencium). Along with Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley researchers
have discovered 16 chemical elements in total – more than any other
university in the world. Berkeley is a founding member of the
Association of American Universities and continues to have very high
research activity with $730.7 million in research and development
expenditures in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2014.
History
View,
from Memorial Glade, of Sather Tower (The Campanile), the center of UC
Berkeley. The ring of its bells and clock can be heard from all over
campus.
1866 - 2014:
In
1866, the private College of California purchased the land comprising
the current Berkeley campus. Because it lacked sufficient funds to
operate, it eventually merged with the state-run Agricultural, Mining,
and Mechanical Arts College to form the University of California, the
first full-curriculum public university in the state.
Ten
faculty members and almost 40 students made up the new University of
California when it opened in Oakland in 1869. Frederick H. Billings was a
trustee of the College of California and suggested that the college be
named in honor of the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley. In 1870,
Henry Durant, the founder of the College of California, became the first
president. With the completion of North and South Halls in 1873, the
university relocated to its Berkeley location with 167 male and 222
female students and held its first classes.
Beginning
in 1891, Phoebe Apperson Hearst made several large gifts to Berkeley,
funding a number of programs and new buildings, and sponsoring, in 1898,
an international competition in Antwerp, Belgium, where French
architect Émile Bernard submitted the winning design for a campus master
plan. In 1905, the University Farm was established near Sacramento,
ultimately becoming the University of California, Davis. By the 1920s,
the number of campus buildings had grown substantially, and included
twenty structures designed by architect John Galen Howard.
Robert
Gordon Sproul served as president from 1930 to 1958. By 1942, the
American Council on Education ranked UC Berkeley second only to Harvard
University in the number of distinguished departments. UC Berkeley Students participate in a one-day Peace Strike opposing U.S. involvement in World War II. April 19, 1940
During
World War II, following Glenn Seaborg's then-secret discovery of
plutonium, Ernest Orlando Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory began to
contract with the U.S. Army to develop the atomic bomb. UC Berkeley
physics professor J. Robert Oppenheimer was named scientific head of the
Manhattan Project in 1942. Along with the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory (formerly the Radiation Lab), Berkeley is now a partner in
managing two other labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory (1943) and
Lawrence Liver more National Laboratory (1952).
Originally,
military training was compulsory for male undergraduates, and Berkeley
housed an armory for that purpose. In 1917, Berkeley's ROTC program was
established, and its School of Military Aeronautics trained future
pilots, including Jimmy Doolittle, who graduated with a B.A. in 1922.
Both Robert McNamara and Frederick C. Weyand graduated from UC
Berkeley's ROTC program, earning B.A. degrees in 1937 and 1938,
respectively. In 1926, future fleet admiral Chester W. Nimitz
established the first Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps unit at
Berkeley. During World War II, the military increased its presence on
campus to recruit more officers, and by 1944, more than 1,000 Berkeley
students were enrolled in the V-12 Navy College Training Program and
naval training school for diesel engineering. The Board of Regents ended
compulsory military training at Berkeley in 1962.
During
the McCarthy era in 1949, the Board of Regents adopted an
anti-communist loyalty oath. A number of faculty members objected and
were dismissed; ten years passed before they were reinstated with back
pay. In
1952, the University of California became an entity separate from the
Berkeley campus. Each campus was given relative autonomy and its own
Chancellor. Then-president Sproul assumed presidency of the entire
University of California system, and Clark Kerr became the first
Chancellor of UC Berkeley.
Berkeley
gained a reputation for student activism in the 1960s with the Free
Speech Movement in 1964, and opposition to the Vietnam War. In the
highly publicized People's Park protest in 1969, students and the school
conflicted over use of a plot of land; the National Guard was called in
and violence erupted. Then governor of California Ronald Reagan called
the Berkeley campus "a haven for communist sympathizers, protesters, and
sex deviants." Modern students at Berkeley are less politically active,
with a greater percentage of moderates and conservatives. Democrats
outnumber Republicans on the faculty by a ratio of 9:1.
Various
human and animal rights groups have conflicted with Berkeley. Native
Americans conflicted with the school over repatriation of remains from
the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Animal-rights activists
have threatened faculty members using animals for research.The school's
response to tree sitters protesting construction caused controversy in
the local community.
On
May 1, 2014, UC Berkeley was named one of fifty-five higher education
institutions under investigation by the Office of Civil Rights "for
possible violations of federal law over the handling of sexual violence
and harassment complaints" by the White House Task Force to Protect
Students from Sexual Assault. The investigation comes after 31 female
students made three federal complaints: first, a Clery Act complaint was
filed in May 2013, and then, after a lack of response from the
University, a second Clery Act Complaint and Title IX complaint were
filed on February 26, 2014.